Dorothy had been sitting very still indeed. She said, "Was the murdered woman related to Dick?"
"No, not directly. She was related to old Mrs. Bartee."
"Is old Mrs. Bartee still alive?" asked his mother.
''Yes she is," said Dorothy. "Did "Then, Johnny, you absolutely cam But Dorothy said, "You don't wani family, do you, Johnny?''
He opened his mouth, took air, do She said briskly, "How and when a "Driving. In the morning." "I'U go, too.''
Johnny didn't know what to say. "What's going on?" said Barbara Si Dorothy leaned forward. "It's jus all know that you did go to see At least I know it, and I think your worried about this old murder ca: didn't want Nan mixed up with tha the matter?"
Johnny felt the red in his face. ] "I guess," he said, "this is what yc tuition."
"You may as well give up," his J deal out a solitaire game.
"All right. O.K. I'll admit I took rights of it."
"In what way?" his mother frowne Johnny searched for a stout lie t< mother's intuition. "There's an idea, tee family kinda drove this poor hu way they froze him out. I mean, il pie . .."
"Ummm," said his mother. "It's tn thing about them, do we?" "It's too late." said Dorothv.
He rose.
"That's awful early for you, Dotty," he wen "Maybe you could write Nan and fix it up to g day or so?"
Dorothy was looking up at him. She said rather go with you, Johnny." The phrase rockec was an echo in it somewhere.
His mother said, "Dorothy, you go right si this minute. I'll pack for you."
The women scurried.
"Do you give up?" his father said to John] stood there. Johnny rubbed his head.
There must be such a thing as male intuitior later. Because his father said to him quietly, step, son."
In the old frame house that stood, smothere< big trees for miles around, the nurse was he] lady to bed in the front room downstairs.
"Such a s^veet little girl, isn't she, Mrs. BarteCi
The old lady's teeth were in the glass and she to smile. She mumbled through her soft old li mire to have a young and pretty face in the he did. There was Josephine. There was Christy."
"And Miz Bianche."
(The old lady didn't - include Miz Blanche.] is Nan. Nan. It doesn't suit her."
"Short names are all the rage," the nurse said.
In the huge parlor, the other side of tf Blanche Bartee said to her husband Bartholc can't im.agine Dick married to that child. And I can't imagine . . ."
"You don't think he's changed? You don't think he's settled? Dick makes you nervous?"
The bracelets were still. "No, no," she murmured nervously.
Upstairs in the hall, at the door of the big back bedroom, Dick said to his fiancee, "You're tired. Been a long bad day. Sleep well."
"I think I will sleep," Nan said. "I feel at home here. Isn't that strange?"
"No."
"Why not?" Nan spoke dreamily.
"Because wherever I am is your home, love." He was murmuring. "Marry me. Why must we wait?"
"Just a httle while," Nan said. "Not too long, darling."
Dorothy wasn't a chatterer today. Mile after mile slipped undre the car's wheels in the misty morning and she asked no questions, either. But she was a presence. Johnny couldn't forget that she was there. Finally he said, "What will you do if the Bartees won't take you in?"
"I'll stay in a motel."
Something about this stubbornness pleased him. "Then maybe you don't think it's too late."
"It's late," she said.
"What do you think of Dick Bartee?"
"I think he's—been around."
"Is he really in love with Nan?"
"Shes in love," Dorothy said crisply. "He gave her an awful rush. She was too used to you, Johnny."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh ... I don't know. He's too old for Nan."
"Thirty-two. I'm twenty-eight, of course."
"You're too old for her, too," said Dorothy tartly.
Johnny looked sideways. "You're on the warpath," he said.
"Oh, Johnny, don't—"
"Don't what?"
"Don't go round the mulberry bush. And don't ever take a he-detector test, either."
;'Whatl"
"How do you suppose I knew you were lying about not seeing Emily?" Johnny remembered her head on his breast when his heart had jumped. Dorothy now put her cool
fingers gently on his wrist. "You just made up this job with Roderick Griines. Didn't you?"
He knew his heart jumped again. He took his hand off the wheel, turned it, and put her hand away. "I've got the job," he said sternly. "And none of your tricks."
She was contrite. "All right, Johnny. Don't tell me anything more, if you don't want to."
"Oh I want to," he said in a moment. "We're on the same side. Maybe I need you."
"Maybe," she murmured. Her head was turned away.
"This Christy McCauley was twenty-two years old," Johnny began. "She got killed by a blow, and her husband was caught with the weapon in his hand. I talked to him in prison."
"Oh?"
"I think ni have to tell you this," Johnny went on judiciously. "He thinks Dick Bartee did it."
"I see," said Dorothy at last. "So that's it." She straightened. "Did Emily know that? How could she know that?"
"Don't know," he said quickly. "She wanted me to—try and find out—"
"Why didn't you tell us?" Dorothy denianded.
"Because look, Dot—there's a good possibility this^manr McCauley, may be just psycho. There's no real reason to be-Heve what he says."
"You should have told us," Dorothy said stonily.
"I . . . What about Nanr
"What about her?" said Dorothy. If anybody^ thought my fiance had ever killed anybody, Vd want to know about it."
Johnny winced. But he could not tell her any more. He could not tell her who Nan was. He had promised.
Dorothy said, "I don't see what you think you're going to do. The Bartees aren't going to break down and tell you a lot of stuff that never came out before. Dick isn't going to admit it, if he ever killed anybody. You'll have to tell Nan the whole business, Johnny, because that is all you will be able to do."
Johnny said angrily, "I am not going to tell her unless I've got a lot more reason to think there's something to it. And you're not going to tell her imtil I say so."
Dorothy said nothing,
"Promise me that, Dot, or I'll—"
'^ouni what?'' she asked coolly.
They drove in silence a mile or two.
Johnny said at last, "Well, what are we going to do? In your independent judgment." He smiled at her. "You've got rights, Dot. I'm sorry."
She said, siuprising him, "I can see how hard it is—for you. You are going to look pretty jealous and mean, aren't you?"
"That's right," he said grimly, in a moment.
"How long ago wa5 this murder?" she asked.
"Seventeen years," he snapped. Dorothy had made him smart and sting.
"But Dick was just a kidi"
"Fifteen years old."
"But that's impossible!"
"Nope, not impossible. I haven't told you about another talk I had . . ." So now he gave her the George Rush eye-view of Dick Bartee.
"Anything else you haven't told me?" she asked him mildly when he had finished.
He reflected. Couldn't talk about the money. That would come too close to connecting Nan with the Bartees. He said, "Something else, one way or the other, is what I'm after."
Dorothy was silent a long time. Then she said, "I wonder why you don't trust me."
"I still don't know what you're going to do," he said in exasperation. "Look, if I were positive . . . but I'm not. Dotty. I just don't know. I want to protect Nan from any kind of hurt, and it's hard for me. You're right, I'm going to look jealous and mean if I tell all this. Yet I've got to know. Why can't you see that?"
"I see that," said Dorothy in a momen
t, gravely. "I'll be quiet, Johnny. Not that I agree, but because I'd be a fool to do what you don't want me to do, when I know there's something more you haven't told me."
He didn't speak.
"I will trust you,'' she said. "I know you always have looked out for Nan."
He felt relieved. He picked up her left hand. He wanted to make her know he was grateful, so he started to raise it to his hps. Dorothy snatched it away. "The Bartees might
throw you out," she said brightly, "but if they let me in, I'll be your inside spy."
"It's not a very pretty job," he said ruefully.
"What do we care about that," she said, "if Nan's engaged to a murderer?"
He couldn't answer.
Five times it was on the end of Johnny's tongue to tell her the rest of it. Five times he stopped before he told.
Aunt Emily's face. There goes the meaning of my life. The face of McCauley. // I have been wrong, I pray the Lord. Dick Bartee's face. No reason that I know . . . The old man's letter, kind and wise . . . the little girl all happiness.
Who was Johnny Sims to decide against them all?
CHAPTER 9
It was alm«st five o'clock in the afternoon by the time they turned into a road that ran between vast flats of what seemed to be pure sand. Johnny had seen this country when rows of twisted sticks stretched across as desolate and unproductive-looking a landscape, as one would see this side of the moon. At this season the sticks were hidden in green.
This private road, thought Johnny, was the 'long, long driveway' that Chnton McCauley had walked on a midnight, long years ago. It made a loop around a knoll with a tuft of trees upon it that stood up like a hairy wart on the smooth face of the land. Johnny noted another road leading away to the back.
He took the narrow tum-o£F into the thicket of trees that curved up to the door of a huge wooden house of Victorian design which was painted, gingerbread and all, a soft pale piuplish color. The efiPect was rather pleasing.
They parked and went up the steps. Double wooden doors with old-fashioned etched glass in their upper portions. The doors to which Clinton McCauley had fitted his key? Johnny punched a bell-button,
A neat maid opened the doors. Dorothy asked for Nan. They were let in.
They stepped upon a red carpet. Surely, thought Johnny, not the same red carpet upon which Clinton McCauley had found the candlestick lying. But, if not, it was a replacement that repeated. There was a lot of red carpet. The hall was fifteen feet wide and it went far and deep into the old mansion. He thought he could tell, by an alteration in the hght, where the stairs went up, on the left, about half-way back.
To their inmiediate right, an arch was shut off by two tightly closed sliding doors. To their left an arch had no doors at aU and from this room, as if she came around tlie comer somehow, Nan appeared.
She moved hghtly. Johnny saw that she had regained that dancing air, the effect of some inner joy that he, J. Sims might have to destroy. Behind her loomed Dick Bartee, the tall blond man, easy in his own place, not a type who showed surprise. Then the two girls were exchanging httle jabberings of surprise and explanation.
Johnny said to Dick in the proper undertone, "I wonder if I could wash?"
Bartee nodded. ''Under the stairs. Just go on down the haU."
So Johnny set off upon the red carpet. He knew very well that he might not be within these walls but this once, and he wanted to look at the study. It lay across from the bottom of the stairs that wound up in a square pattern to the left. Johnny went into the little lavatory, remained a judicious time. When he opened its door he did not step out. He stood and inspected, across the fifteen feet of the hall, the old man's study where Christy McCauley had been beaten to death with an iron candlestick seventeen years ago.
The small square room was wide open. Sliding doors here, too, but not shut. There was a mantel piece diiectly opposite, in the outside wall. There were glass-covered bookcases, a hbrary table. The safe, he thought, was probably behind the picture, a rustic scene that hung over the mantel. At least he couldn't spot it, elsewhere. Then, with shock, his exploring eyes perceived that he was being watched by a lizard gaze from the wrinkled old face of an ancient woman in a wheel chair.
Johnny was nobody to skulk sheepishly away. He moved out of the lavatory, closed its door, marched across the red carpet, entered the study. "Ma'am," he addressed her, "my name is John Sims. I am a friend of Nan Padgett."
The old lady regarded him with some interest.
"How do you do?" he said.
"They haven't come to take me to my tea," she said. "So I don't do very well."
"Then I'll take you," he said, "if youll tell me where."
The old lady let out a rusty chuckle. "To the parlor," she said. "I want my tea."
Johnny saw how to release the brake on the wheelchair. Then he got behind it and pushed it out into the hall. He turned to his left and the old lady did not object. So Johnny pushed on towards the front doors and then he turned her into the big room from which Nan had come.
"Motherl" said a man's voice. "Oh, I see!"
The old lady was chortling witii delight. "Young man's name is John Sims," she said triumphantly. "Well? Tea?"
The man who had spoken held out his hand. "Thanks for bringing my mother in, Mr. Sims," he said pleasantly. "I'm Bart Bartee."
A thin worft^n with bronze hair, a sharp prow of a nose and a small chin hurried to take his place at the pushing-bar of the chair. "I'm Blanche Bartee. You surprised us."
"Surprised you, didn't I?" said the old lady with relish. "Miss Adams makes me wait." .
"No reason why you should wait," said Blanche soothingly. She pushed tlie old lady to a position down the huge room.
"I should think not. In my house," the old lady said.
Bart spoke. "Come in. Come in. Sit down. Mother has tea, but the rest of us have something a little more stimulating. Join us?"
"Thanks."
Then Johnny was seated with a glass in his hand and he was assembling his impressions. The big room was charming. The furnishings were old but stately and attractively well cared for. It was the room of a moneyed family, who did not need nor wish to be up-to-the-minute in fashion. The things they'd had for years were precious and significant. He was within the stronghold of the Bartees. Young Bart
was master here. His wife was not the mistress. The old lady was the mistress of the house.
A woman in a white uniform came pushing a teacart, apologizing. The old lady nibbled and sipped and twinkled at Johnny. He seemed to have taken her fancy.
Bart, Jr., was a man about forty, Johnny surmised. Not tall, not big, but well made. He had an air of competent authority. Blanche's age he could not guess, except that she was not a young girl and not an old lady. She struggled to say what a gracious hostess ought to say while the old lady waited to pounce rudely. Johnny could sense strain.
Blanche was saying now, to Dorothy, "You must stay with us, of course. There is plenty of room."
"Who is she?" said the old lady crossly.
"I am Dorothy Padgett, Nan's cousin," said Dorothy promptly. "I should have phoned, I know, but I caught a ride with Johnny at the last minute. It's very kind of you," said Dorothy directly to the old lady, "to ask me to stay."
The old lady nodded. "Not at all," she said, looking pleased with herself.
Dorothy sent a smile of apology to Blanche, who merely looked patient. Bart was watching Dorothy with pleasure— and, perhaps, surprise.
"How nice," said Blanche to Johnny, "that business brought you down."
"I'd better tell you what my business is." Johnny put the glass, whose contents he had not tasted, cai-efully down on the little table beside his chair.
"Matter of fact," interrupted Dick Bartee, "it is a good thing you two are here. There may be a wedding soon. You'll want to attend." He cast a lover's look at Nan, beside liim. Nan was demure, tucked in, belonging.
"Nan isn't," said Dorothy, "going to get married withou
t me around. We are all the Padgetts left."
Blanche began to make sympathetic sounds. It was all pleasant, poHte, genteel. And Johnny was here to destroy this mood.
He broke in again as soon as he could. "Have you ever heard of Roderick Grimes?"
Blanche's face, a paler bronze than her hair, put on a frown. "It does sound familiar."
"He writes books," Johnny told them.
"That's right, he does," said Dick. "About murder."
The Bartee heads turned. Johnny knew one word had destroyed the mood.
"Right. I do some leg-work for him on occasion. He's given me a chore, this time, that brought me here. I am to talk to a few people about the McCauley case."
Johnny heard Blanche's breath catch. If Bart's smooth face gave any sign, Johnny missed it. He was noticing the twitch of Dick Bartee's full mouth. The glance of those gray eyes seemed to rest on Johnny's face, not probing, but coolly resting.
"You can't mean Christy!" said Blanche with dismay.
"I'm afraid I do, Mrs. Bartee," said Johnny. "You see, Grimes ..."
"I know about him. He v^rites up those things," said Dick in a pleasantly informative voice. "Puts them in books."
Nan said from her snug place next to Dick, "Who is Christy?"
"Christy McCauley," said the old lady. Crumbs fell from the comer of her mouth. "Poor Christy McCauley."
"Christy," said Blanche in an aside to Nan, "was Mother Bartee's granddaughter." -"•
"Nelly's little girl," said the old lady. "My only daughter's only daughter, I used to say."
Blanche looked at her vdth alarm. Johnny thought he could read the thought in her bronze head. The old lady ought to be gotten out of the room. It was so vjvid an impression that Johnny found himself waiting for this to be ac-comphshed.
But Bart said sharply, "This man Grimes wants to write up that story?"
"It depends on what I can report to him," said Johnny. "He is interested in old cases that lend themselves to his kind of recapitulation."
"And what is that?" asked Bart sternly.
Johnny said gently, "If it makes an interesting story, sir."
"I don't think," said Blanche, "that it is anything we want at all. How can he do this without having consulted the— the family?" Blanche flicked a nervous look at the old lady who, still as a lizard, was watching her balefully.
Something blue Page 6
